FallenMatt
Guest
I;ve got this itch that comes every so often to me.. you know, the "need to get a new toy" one...
I am thinking about getting Sony DCR-TRV38 MiniDV (digital) camcorder.. a very cute, tiny piece of electronics.
Of course the most cool use of it would be getting into underwater video stuff. After spending looong time on google trying to find info about housings for camcorderss i came to the following conclusions:
most of the cheap stuff is "sport" housing - ie. rated to 2 m (that's barelly 7 feet) or , at best, 10 m.. so basically useless.
then there are the fancy housings that fit particular camera that cost $2k or more (way beyond my budget)
then there are the "universal" ones. And here is my confusion.
in short, all those seem to be: a piece of pipe with two flat enclousures and some latches, some handles added to that. This stuff you can buy as cheap as $300. That is without any recording control : just hit record, put camera in and go diving hoping that you have enough tape for it all. This would be very hard to use with the MiniDV camcorder because Minidv tape records only 60 minutes of movie.
now you add electronic controls and suddenly the price skyrockets to close or above $1000.
does that mean that electronics that implement a very simple subset of LANC protocol and a piece of wire costs upwards of $600 ??? it is just hard to believe.
From the description that i've found it seems that LANC is a simple serial protocol communicating at 9600 baud so it should be a very easy (cheap, off the shelf parts) to implement it with some microcontroller or microprocessor. I wouldn't expect it to run into high hundreds of dollars. Put the electronics inside the housing, run a cable outside to mechanical controlls and you are done.
So why there is such a great price difference ?
with adding the controls ?
In other words: if i could get a functional housing for that sony minidv i would probably spring for it (there is just more interesting stuff to film underwater than on the dry land
..especially the example of oly 5050 with its rather affordable housing comes to mind...
.. so ok, this is more like a brain dump than a question.. just something that was nudging my mind for the past few days...
I am thinking about getting Sony DCR-TRV38 MiniDV (digital) camcorder.. a very cute, tiny piece of electronics.
Of course the most cool use of it would be getting into underwater video stuff. After spending looong time on google trying to find info about housings for camcorderss i came to the following conclusions:
most of the cheap stuff is "sport" housing - ie. rated to 2 m (that's barelly 7 feet) or , at best, 10 m.. so basically useless.
then there are the fancy housings that fit particular camera that cost $2k or more (way beyond my budget)
then there are the "universal" ones. And here is my confusion.
in short, all those seem to be: a piece of pipe with two flat enclousures and some latches, some handles added to that. This stuff you can buy as cheap as $300. That is without any recording control : just hit record, put camera in and go diving hoping that you have enough tape for it all. This would be very hard to use with the MiniDV camcorder because Minidv tape records only 60 minutes of movie.
now you add electronic controls and suddenly the price skyrockets to close or above $1000.
does that mean that electronics that implement a very simple subset of LANC protocol and a piece of wire costs upwards of $600 ??? it is just hard to believe.
From the description that i've found it seems that LANC is a simple serial protocol communicating at 9600 baud so it should be a very easy (cheap, off the shelf parts) to implement it with some microcontroller or microprocessor. I wouldn't expect it to run into high hundreds of dollars. Put the electronics inside the housing, run a cable outside to mechanical controlls and you are done.
So why there is such a great price difference ?
with adding the controls ?
In other words: if i could get a functional housing for that sony minidv i would probably spring for it (there is just more interesting stuff to film underwater than on the dry land
..especially the example of oly 5050 with its rather affordable housing comes to mind...
.. so ok, this is more like a brain dump than a question.. just something that was nudging my mind for the past few days...